LG launch Chocolate home cinema

LG have unleashed this cracking Chocolate J10HD home cinema system which features virtual surround sound and a built-in hard disk.

Its high gloss finish and glowing touch sensitive controls give the product a premium-market look and the two matching speakers and separate sub woofer will fit snugly alongside your LG TV. You can rip CDs from the built-in DVD player and record from the radio thanks to the onboard 80GB hard drive and 5.1 surround sound will help make watching movies a cinema-like experience. Available from next month, priced around £400. See www.lge.co.uk for more information.

WIN Blackberrys

We’re huge fans of RIM's Blackberry Curve and Pearl here on GadgiTs – there are simply no better e-mail communications devices on the market – so here’s your chance to get your hands on one of these fab gizmos for yourself. We’ve teamed up with the Carphone Warehouse to offer two lucky readers the chance to win a Blackberry Curve each, while another will bag a Backberry Pearl. To stand a chance of winning, just tell us what RIM stands for. Is it:

a) Research In Motion

b) Repeat Intuitive Methods

c) Really Important Memory

Then e-mail your asnwer, together with your name, age, address and contact telephone number to: comps@notw.co.uk

For more information on both Blackberry handsets and to get your phone, your way, see www.carphonewarehouse.com

Competition closes midnight Tuesday, 3rd July 2007. Usual News of the World competition rules apply.

SanDisk unveil Sansa Express

Sandisk have launched this pocket marvel – the Sansa Express – which is a flash-based MP3 player with a 1GB memory. It includes a microSD expansion slot, digital FM tuner with recording capabilities, data storage and a direct USB connection to your PC. The bright, four-line OLED display looks great with the blue backlit effect and you’ll get around 15 hours of battery life from it. It’s simple to use and even easier to navigate around the menu systems and thanks to the microSD card, you’ll be able to add an additional 2GB worth of storage to it should you need to. It’s about the same size as a pack of chewing gum and works seamlessly with MP3 and WMA files. It’ll cost around £30 – see www.sandisk.co.uk for more details.

Bigger than Paris

The Apple iPhone, which hits American stores today, is bigger than ex-jailbird socialite Paris Hilton. If you Google  "Paris Hilton" you'll net just 32,400,000 English pages to the iPhone's 49,400,000. It's official then.

On hand with the Sony Ericsson K850i

Sony Ericsson have unveiled two summer stunners, with this 5 megapixel K850i Cybershot the pick of the bunch.

Featuring a sleek black finish, it delivers the best camera pictures from any mobile phone we've seen thanks to the nifty autofocus and Xenon lens. Flash multi-shot capabilities, an image stabiliser, and various photo twaking applications are also included, while the on-board HDSPA 3.5G data technology will help you upload your pictures to a blog in a matter of seconds.

A multimedia player, radio, Memory Stick Micros Card slot, stereo Bluetooth, a web browser, email client and RSS reader are also included.

Video capture isn't the best though – the 320x240 pixel resolution being significantly weaker than the Nokia N95's 640x 480 capabilities and the keypad on the K850i isn't the easiest to use.

It measures 102x48x17mm and weighs 118grams and is available in velvet blue and luminous green colours.

It's smaller than its predecessor – the K810i -  but is slightly chunkier but that’s because Sony Ericsson have designed it to look like a bona fide digital camera. A power up camera key automatically opens the integrated shutter cap and a three-way switch allows you to activate the camera, video and photo playback modes. Despite the lack of optical zoom, it's by far the best camera phone we've ever seen and the BestPic and Photo Fix picture software are easy to use thanks to the large 2.4inch screen.

New Walkman phone announced...

Sony Ericsson have also unveiled a new flagship Walkman handset – the W960 – which has an iPod Nano-rivalling 8GB of memory and claims a PC-to-phone transfer in less than three minutes. It'll hold around 8,000 of your songs and has 3G and WiFi connectivity. It’s slender 16mm frame packs in a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus that works brilliantly and you can access your songs at the touch of a button.

The main downside for both of these new phones is the lack of GPS – which the Nokia N95 trumps them on. Although in terms of design, styling and functionality, the K850i and W960 are at the top of the tree for Camera and Music phones.

O2 hatch Cocoon

Meanwhile O2's new 3G handset – dubbed the Cocoon – will hold around 500 tracks on its 2GB internal memory. The white clamshell phone features a minimalist design with blue LED display on the fascia that you can tailor to feature the information you want on it, such as what MP3s are playing, what time it is or a few words from your latest text messages.

It's not loaded with features, but the 2 megapixel camera with 4x zoom is pretty good and you can hook wireless Bluetooth headphones or speakers up to it.

Out next month, the Cocoon will also sync with the O2 – the old Millennium Dome – so you'll be able to download maps and other cool info and applications direct to the phone on your visit. Check out Sunday's official launch of the O2 Arena - featuring US stadium rockers Bon Jovi - by logging on to www.o2.co.uk for all the latest news.

Archos unveil 605 Wi-Fi

Here’s Archos’ latest portable media player – the 605 WiFi. Featuring flash support, it’ll give you Internet content on the move so all your favourite YouTube videos can be stored and accessed easily. At just 15mm thick, it’s got a 4.3inch touchscreen and is available in 4GB, 40GB and 160GB versions. It can be used with a DVR dock to record content direct from your TV and Archos are set to launch their own content portal called Streaming Plus later this year. It also includes support for HDMI, RGB and Ethernet. Available from August, prices start at around £120, see www.archos.com for more info.

Garmin launch new sat navs

Garmin have launched two new Sat Nav devices – the nuvi 200W and the nuvi 250W which have bright, 4.3” widescreens and are amongst the slimmest on the market. The simple menu system helps make it easy for you to plan your routes and get around town easily. The 200W includes maps of the UK and Ireland while the beefed up 250W comes preloaded with detailed mapping for 32 European countries throughout Western and Eastern Europe. Points of interest such as hotels, restaurants and petrol stations are also included, while other helpful additions such as a built-in picture viewer, calculator and currency converter make this a tidy piece of kit. Additional maps are available for the US, New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil. Prices start at around £200 for the 200W model – see www.garmin.co.uk for more details.

Up close with Forza 2

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GadgiTs had an exclusive hands-on with vrooming great new race sim Forza 2 Motorsport at Silverstone. We raced a Ferrari 360 Modena and Lotus Exige round Britain's most famous race circuit in the game and then tore up the track using the real thing. Take a look at our video above to see highlights from the day and some in-game footage of this awesome driving sim.

Sony preps PSP Lite

Rumours are rife that Sony are set to announce a PSP Lite at next month's E3 games expo.The new device won't be a completely new, upgraded version of the PSP, but instead it'll be similar to what Nintendo did with the DS when they launched their Lite. The PSP Lite will be thinner than the original version, with a new LED backscreen that will make your games a lot brighter but still conserve that all-important battery life. The UMD slot remains but we're hearing that load times for the discs will be a lot faster and up to 8GB of flash memory will be squeezed into the device too. There's also talk the PS3's D-Pad will be appearing on the new handheld but although there's been no official word from Sony. We're expecting an announcement next month.

Take the plunge with Optio W30

We've been trialling Pentax's new Optio W30 digital camera and have been well pleased with the results.

It's a waterproof 7 megapixel snapper that produces great results under water to depths of three metres.

You'll get around two hours worth of use from it and it also boasts a 2.5-inch LCD screen, digital shake reduction, 3x optical zoom and high-quality movie recording at 30 frames per second.

Face recognition technology is becoming standard on more and more cameras these days, and the Optio W30 is no different. This'll ensure that your shots are focused on faces no matter where your subjects are standing in the frame. In addition, optimal exposure settings are automatic, so that areas with faces are not darkened, even if there is backlighting. There's even an option to jazz up your snaps with things like flowers, insects and jewellery thanks to the macro photography function.

If you fancy taking the plunge, get one from www.amazon.co.uk priced at £157.

US iPhone advert & launch date

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The most highly anticipated gadget ever is set for a Stateside debut on 29^th June.

Yep, the Apple iPhone hits shelves in the US at the end of the month and our American amigos are already being treated to a TV advert showing off the phone's functionality which you can check out by clicking on the video above.

The full features are showcased from the ground-breaking multi-touch screen browsing through your iTunes collection, photos and emails, watching videos and making a call.

There's still no news on an official UK release date, but the latest whispers we're hearing say it'll be early next year for us. See www.apple.com for more info.

Curved ball for Blackberry

                                           

BLACKBERRY weren't Lost  for stars when they launched the Curve in the States this week.

Michelle Rodruigez and Evangeline Lilly led the cast to toast the latest Rim handheld, featured in Gadgits last month. 

And who could be more appropriate than Latin lovely Michelle to attend. A quick search for info about the launch on the web revealed that she is also on the cover of a lesbian magazine called . . . Curve.